Victorian Dominatrices
Women of Arcane Power in Nineteenth-Century Fiction

Area 10 – Scienze dell'antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche

Victorian Dominatrices investigates women of arcane power in the fiction by Charlotte Brontë, William Morris, Thomas Hardy, Vernon Lee and Ford Madox Ford. This study focuses on a variety of fictional genres (gothic, romance, naturalistic, fantastic, and impressionistic) and situates them in the fields of art, culture and society. The aim of this book is to explore the ways in which Brontë, Morris, Hardy, Lee and Ford offer a new version of the Victorian femme fatale, a woman of social, sexual, arcane power who is able to destabilise patriarchal authorities. From mistresses of courtly romance to dominatrix witches who practice sexual thraldom, from women of archaeo–astronomical power to mistresses of metamorphosis and domestic dominas, Charlotte Brontë, Morris, Hardy, Lee and Ford depict Victorian dominatrices as “laughing Medusas”, who haunt men’s imagination. By employing a multifaceted approach to literature, and offering new readings of such works as Jane Eyre, The Wood Beyond the World, The Woodlanders, Hauntings, and The Shifting of the Fire, this volume intends to put into dialogue mainstream literary productions and redefine the terms of critical debate about the New Woman.

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